Europe is fast becoming the continent of Fat people. More than half of adults in European Union nations are obese or overweight and the young are increasingly following on the same path.
Fatty and sweet-based diets are quite common in Europe, which is the leading cause of obesity. Other things apart, lack of exercise results in accumulation of fats and cholesterol levels, leading to fatness. These are the main factors leading to poor health, according to EU Health Commissioner Markos Kyprianou.
Everybody has to be blamed - including the authorities, including the industry, including the consumers. If we don’t act, today’s overweight children will be tomorrow’s heart attack victims. Even more worrying is that the rate of increase of that number is more than 400,000 children a year,
Kyprianou lamented. He further added EU has been warning Governments for years, but the situation is getting worse, as the warning is not paid heed to.
Among the 27 members of the EU, over 21 million children are overweight. To counteract the drift, the EU has asked food manufacturers to endorse healthier foods with lesser fats and says many popular manufacturers have already committed for the same.
The biggest problem according to a few health experts is that southern member states have abandoned the Mediterranean diet based on olive oil and fresh fish and go for fast food. Further, the use of fruit and vegetables is lesser than medical recommendations. Contrarily, the intake of fat and saturated fats is high throughout the continent, while the spending on cereals has fallen by a quarter since the 1960s.
Such habits have only contributed to a situation in which majority of the member states, more than 50 percent of the adult population, is overweight or obese.
The Commission has proposed to tighten advertising rules on unhealthy processed food. It urged the food industry to curtail sugar, fat and salt production and appealed to the sports organizations to do more to get youngsters to engage in physical exercise.
Via:Yahoo
